


this is how it began (this is the secret between)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asexual Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton is deeply confused by his life, Coulson is done with his secret assassin team relationships, F/F, F/M, Pre-Canon, content warning: references to canon brainwashing, content warning: references to canon-compliant child abuse, pre-avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 18:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5302409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Laura's a translator for SHIELD," Natasha tells him. "We're keeping her."</p><p>"Are we?" Clint asks, and Nat just rolls her eyes, tucks a strand of Laura's hair back behind her ear.</p><p>"Yeah," she says, "we are," and Clint feels like he's missed something, can't parse the situation properly, but that's a feeling he's had pretty much every day for the last twenty one months, since he pulled Natasha Romanoff out of Prague and into the questionably welcoming arms of SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is how it began (this is the secret between)

_This is an agent_ , Tony said the first time he met Laura, and it's Tony being an asshole, of course it is, but here's the thing: he's not wrong.

Everyone assumes he somehow met Laura outside of SHIELD entirely, that she's sweetly separate from his twin-assassins thing with Romanoff, that he's never quite told her what he does.

It's the opposite. It's Natasha who meets Laura first, Nat who looks up from where she's sitting in the SHIELD cafeteria with a small brunette. Her body's tilted in a way that Clint recognizes as intent, not the sway of seduction she uses on mission but something simultaneously more open and more cautious and delicate and careful entirely.

"Hey Clint," she says. "Get over here. This is Laura. Laura, Clint."

"он милый," Laura says, her eyes amused, and Nat snorts.

" он дурак," Nat replies, and Clint's Russian isn't great, but he can identify both 'cute' and 'idiot'. Natasha's tone of voice is fond, though, or at least fondly exasperated, and he'll take it. He settles next to Laura, sandwiching her in between him and Nat, puts his bow down on the table just to see what her reaction will be.

Her reaction, apparently, is a bland lack of tells that would make their handler proud, and Clint reconsiders his initial impression of  _Laura, brunette, speaks Russian, soft eyes_ , adds 'probably an agent with at least three years training' to the list.

"Laura's a translator for SHIELD," Natasha tells him.  "We're keeping her."

"Are we?" Clint asks, and Nat just rolls her eyes, tucks a strand of Laura's hair back behind her ear.

"Yeah," she says, "we are," and Clint feels like he's missed something, can't parse the situation properly, but that's a feeling he's had pretty much every day for the last twenty one months, since he pulled Natasha Romanoff out of Prague and into the questionably welcoming arms of SHIELD. Laura's leaning in against him, her body warm and slight and much less terrifyingly weaponized than the women Clint tends to attract, but the way she's looking at Nat, she seems happy enough to be kept.

 

 

"You and Laura are coming over for dinner tomorrow," Nat says in between breaths, rolls with the punch he throws and pins him neatly on the mats. "Bring wine. Good wine."

"I... okay," Clint says, wonders what counts as  _good_ wine. Probably not a box, he thinks. Probably more than five bucks a bottle. Nat smacks him in the sternum, makes him cough for breath, and he has to stop with the distraction before she kills him already.

He's late for dinner thanks to the wine. It's a meltdown in the Trader Joes nearest SHIELD headquarters, and after twenty minutes of helpless staring, Clint gives up, calls his handler. He wears nice suits, seems like the kind of guy that could pick wine. He'll do a shitshow better of it than Clint, high school dropout and circus runaway, anyway.

"You're not even on assignment right now, Barton," Coulson says, picking up on the second ring.

"I need your help," Clint admits. "Nat invited me to dinner. With Laura. She told me to bring  _good wine_." Coulson goes silent for a moment.

"Agent Andrews," he says at the end of the pause. "Romanoff invited you to dinner with Agent Andrews."

"Yeah," Clint says, "SHIELD translator."

"Fury's going to kill me," Coulson mutters, inexplicably. "Did she have to- okay. Laura Andrews likes riesling and pinot gris. Get a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle and an Oregon pinot gris. Have a good dinner. Keep your comms switched off, please."

"Thanks, Agent," Clint says, genuinely grateful, snaps his cellphone closed. When he shows up at Nat's door, hands her the two bottles, she glances at them evaluatively, gives him a very Russian look, and he can't help but feel he's passed a test.

 

 

Dinner is weirdly un-awkward, and Clint feels simultaneously stupidly out of his depth and like he could listen to Nat and Laura talk all night. They slide from English to Russian back to English as if they don't realize they're doing it, and Laura gestures expansive and elegant with her hands as she elaborates on something. Clint thinks it's maybe a debate on the merits of Dostoyevsky, but then it slips back to the story about Maria Hill and the duck and the new SHIELD recruits, and Laura's laugh is like bells when he clears his throat and tells them how he watched it from the air vents.

"You did  _not_ ," she tells him, and he swears, hand on heart, he did. Laura's laughing harder now, wiping tears from her eyes, and Clint doesn't know how but he wants to watch Laura Andrews laugh for the rest of his life.

They drink all the wine, and shift from the dinner table to Nat's couch. The lights are off in her apartment but she's got approximately a million candles burning, and Nat's posture is less primed-Russian-agent-weapon and more easy stillness, and Clint  _still_ doesn't know what this is, because the way Nat's looking at Laura, it's soft in a way he's never seen her before.

"Clint," Nat says after a pause, "go get the vodka from my freezer."

When he gets back, it's to find Laura's hands tangled in the burnished red of Natasha's hair, and Nat kissing Laura more delicate and careful than he'd known she knows how to be, even with all her subtleties.

"Oh," he says, awkward enough to fill the room, "I'll, just, uh..."

"Don't be an idiot," Nat says, breaking away, and he hears it again in Russian, дурак, and then in English. "Come back to the couch." Clint's never been able to disobey an order from Natasha, on mission or off, and he sits back down at the end of the couch, looks down at the vodka bottle in his hand.

"You weren't kidding," Laura breathes lightly, reaches out and touches the back of his hand but looks at Natasha as she says it. "I thought maybe you were kidding." She settles herself comfortably against Nat, her back to Nat's chest, pokes Clint's thigh with her bare toes. "I  _told_ you you were cute, you know."

"You told  _Nat_ I was cute," Clint argues, "that doesn't count."

"Doesn't it?" Laura asks, arches an eyebrow and tilts her head sideways. Clint doesn't even try not to watch the way Nat strokes a line down the side of her throat.

"So, Laura," Clint says, rubs the back of his neck, shifts awkwardly on the couch. "How many, uh, languages do you speak?"

"Twelve," Laura says. "Which one of them should I use to tell you to shut up and kiss me already?"

English is just fine for that, Clint thinks, and when he leans over, kisses her carefully and then less carefully, feels her teeth on his lip, Natasha makes an approving noise.

"I told you we were keeping her," she murmurs, as if it's obvious.

 

 

"I still don't get what this is," Clint says a month later, in between shooting arrows at whichever asshole SHIELD has them on now, and Natasha huffs something that could be a laugh.

"Do you need me to spell it out for you?" she asks, not out of the breath in the least, maces the last guard. "I like her. You like her. She likes the both of us."

"But it's not..." Clint says, pauses. "You don't... I mean,  _we_ don't..."

"You ever think about fucking me?" Nat points out bluntly, and it makes Clint's brain shut down a little at how terrifying a thought it is. He knows Natasha _doesn't_ , knows sex is part of mission work for her, nothing she'd ever seek out when she's just Natasha and not the Black Widow. "We can work it out as we go along," she adds, gentler. "If you want to."

Clint does, of course he does, it's just that it's kind of a couple of relationship levels above his pay grade.

"It's perfectly reasonable, right, Agent Coulson?" Nat asks, sharp, and of course they've been on comms the entire time.

"Leave me out of your confusingly ambiguous spy threesome," Coulson says back, bloodless and fond, and Clint rolls his eyes, throws himself off the building so he doesn't have to listen to any more.

 

 

After eleven months, Clint feels like they've worked it out as they've gone along, and also feels like he's absolutely sunk in love with Laura Andrews, and he knows one thing: the twin-assassins thing is going to be a problem, even when their third is a SHIELD agent alongside them both.

It doesn't matter, anyway, because Laura's goofily hilarious, kind and gorgeous, and when they're together, Clint feels everything focus and fall away and sharpen until it's her. It's the way it happens when he's up in a high point watching for a target, the focus of a circus high-wire. 

The way it is when it's the three of them, he loves that too, loves the way Laura looks at Nat all soft and joyous and disbelieving.

"I think I'm gonna ask Laura to marry me," he tries, over coffee one morning while they're waiting for a briefing, and Nat nods, props her feet up on Coulson's desk and takes another bite of her donut.

"You should," she says easily, "she's been waiting."  


"Barton," Coulson says, "Romanoff," and Nat swings her feet down.

"Clint's getting married," she tells Coulson, grins sharp at the way he sighs.

"Don't even start," Clint says, "you know you love us. We're your best agents."

"You are," Coulson agrees, "which raises questions about SHIELD's recruitment." Natasha offers him a donut anyway, and he takes it, gets a dusting of powdered sugar light over the lapels of his suit as he covers their mission brief. "Barton," he adds at the end, "congratulations," and it makes Clint grin sharp, just the way Nat does.

 

 

It's Laura's idea, the farm, and Clint frowns a little, touches her face.

"You don't have to-" he says, pauses, doesn't know how to put it in words. She doesn't have to  _give it all up_ , is what he means, doesn't have to be anything other than what she is. The dream of a farmhouse, a picket fence, a wife and children, that's not something he wants Laura to sacrifice her world for, even if it'd keep her safe.

"I know," she smiles, "Clint, I know, but it's not like I'd be giving anything up, except an apartment that's too small for all my books. My SO agreed to let me work remotely, as long as we get a reliable secure network connection, and I grew up in the country as a kid. I miss it."

"Well," Clint says at that, "okay then," and Laura's smile when she sees the farmhouse, stands in the kitchen and wraps her arms around him, it's as bright as the sun.

 

 

"Natasha," Clint asks four months later, "the compartmentalization thing you do. I need you to teach me."

"Laura," Nat says, and it's not a question.

"Laura," he agrees regardless, and feels what's always been unspoken between them. Laura's the point of the triangle they'll both protect from everything else. Laura's who'll they'll protect from each other, if they have to.

"It'll hurt," she warns. "And Clint- I don't know if it can be  _taught_."

She's not wrong. It hurts. It hurts bad, and at first he doesn't get what she's trying to show him. He's seen her do this three times now, three times on missions that have gone badly wrong. It's a neat and careful folding in of herself like complex origami. She folds and folds, tucks her secrets like a paper bird into the still and secret hollow behind her breastbone, opens the rest of herself blank and compliant to conditioning, and when the threat is over, Natasha unfolds, unfurls, smooths the paper of her memories safely back into place.

" _How_ ," he says, frustrated, breathing hard, and Nat's hand stills where she's about to hit him again.

"Watch," she orders, and then, "love is for children," and this time, when he watches, he can see the folding-in behind her eyes.

And then all of a sudden it clicks. It's not  _compartmentalization_ , it's disassociation, the kind he remembers as a kid. He's done this before. A fist to the jaw, and a setting-aside of your thoughts until there's space safe enough to inhabit them again.  _Love is for children_ , Clint thinks, remembers being a child, blinks into the headspace he hasn't felt since he left the shitshow of the circus long behind.

When he tries again, he's more successful, not successful enough, spills enough of his love for Laura that he knows she wouldn't be safe at all.

"I have an idea," Nat says, and it's a bad idea, but it's one they're agreed on, at least. The two of them, they can take care of themselves.

 

Loki floods into his head, and Clint can't think whether he's successful this time, can't  _think_ at all for the blue that's filling up every pore like water.

Natasha breaks him out of it with brutal efficiency, slams his forehead into a metal bar and then waits for him to come up for air.

"Laura," he says, first breath he gets, and Nat closes her eyes, nods once almost imperceptibly, and something unfolds within him.

"I wasn't sure if I held up," Clint says after a long moment of concussed nausea and relief and pain, and Nat shakes her head.

"Of course you did," she tells him. "You gave him me. Just like we planned." He did, Clint realizes, spilled all Nat's secrets as if it were everything his heart contained, let Loki see it and not look below to the smaller and infinitely more precious thing they share. They protected it with everything they had.

The next time Nat visits, just after New York, they sleep in a heap in the bed, Laura in the middle and everyone tangled together. Nat has her fingers wrapped around Clint's bow hand, her other hand light over the new curve of Laura's belly, and Clint closes his eyes, lets himself feel the freefall.


End file.
